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Verna and Robert Midgett of Macclenny.

The Clay County Sheriff’s Office continues to process thousands of leads in the investigation of Somer Thompson’s murder. The 7-year-old’s body was recovered from a Georgia landfill last October.

For Verna and Robert Midgett of Macclenny, the day Somer’s killer is caught can’t come soon enough. Their son, Charles Currier, is the boyfriend of Diena Thompson, Somer’s mother.

The Midgetts experienced firsthand the nightmarish anxiety after Somer’s abduction and the emotional upheaval following news of her death.

“The horror of it can’t be described,” said Mrs. Midgett. “There is just no way to really describe what it was like. At one point, my husband had to take me to Fraser Hospital to be treated for stress.”

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More than $33 million in state funding going to 28 providers of mental health and drug abuse counseling services in Baker, Clay, Nassau and Duval counties could be funneled through one organization after July 2011.

It’s part of an voluntary overhaul of the system that delivers such services to communities across Florida and aims to replace the more than 550 provider contracts that the Department of Children and Families [DCF] now manages with two dozen or fewer agreements with nonprofit managing entities or MEs.

MEs have been established in other parts of the state to oversee provider contracts.

Tonia Branch, the director of NEFSH’s Community Behavioral Healthcare Services office on West Lowder Street, said the approach has worked particularly well in Central Florida.

At the moment, the only ME proposal for Northeast Florida has been submitted by a regional group of mental health advocates and service providers formally known as the Jacksonville Mental Health Coalition, which is seeking a designation as the ME for DCF’s District 4 and Baker County.

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One of 18 visitation stations at the sheriff's complex.

The Baker County Sheriff’s Complex is one of only two facilities in north Florida to have a video visitation center.

Video visitation is fast becoming the standard for communication between prisoners and their visitors. The glass partitions that traditionally separated a prisoner and visitor are quickly disappearing.

There are 18 call stations, each costing about $6000, in the video visitation center at the county jail, which is located separate from the inmate dormitories.

Each is designed as a semi-private booth containing a video monitor, a camera and two telephone hand sets, allowing for group conversation. Prisoners communicate with visitors from one of two video stations in the dormitory where they are housed.

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The Department of Children and Families budget director Nevin Smith reportedly said January 21 the department, which oversees Northeast Florida State Hospital, will not recommend privatizing management of the Macclenny facility.

“And if the committee asks, [Smith] said he will tell them that there is no evidence that it’s the best option at this time,” said Chamber of Commerce director Darryl Register, who spent that day at the Florida Senate’s health and human services appropriations committee meeting and spoke with Mr. Smith.